How We Discovered Our "Perfect Pot of Rice" Technique

This past month, cooking grains has been ourjam. Oddly enough, one of the most common grains--rice--is the trickiest to get right. Knowing this, our test kitchen set out to find a master recipe: We made nearly a dozen pots of long-grain white rice in different ways for a side-by-side comparison. Here were the variables we played with:

Fat or no fatBefore adding them to the liquid, we toasted kernels in oil, and we toasted kernels in butter.

Cooking time and steaming timeWe cooked pots between 15 and 20 minutes and experimented with steaming the rice between 5 and 15 minutes.

Of course, in this cruel world, the rice that was toasted in butter tasted the best by itself. But ultimately, we wanted a basic recipe that could act as a foundation for flavor. We were looking for fluffiness, and for kernels that didn't clump together but had a satisfying texture.

In the end: No stirring (it awakens the sticky starch). A little salt to elevate the flavor. Less water than you might think. And a little nifty trick with a dish towel under the lid as the rice steams to stop excess liquid from dripping back onto the rice. And our test kitchen didn't mind experimenting, either. "Sometimes you need to do a deep dive into a singular subject as a reminder that simple is never simple," said food editor Hunter Lewis. "It was a fun problem to solve."